THERE should be a statue of Richard Griffiths in all places where the public gather. His fizzog should be on stamps. New songs of praise must be written.

The robustly-built Griffiths, who you may remember as Henry Crabbe in TV's Pie in the Sky and more recently as Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter films, may seem an unlikely hero.

But friends, he's my sort of man. For when the mobile phone of a woman in the audience of his latest play went off for the third time, he stopped the performance and ordered her out of the auditorium.

Actors tell me that the blight of the mobile phone call is now rife in the playhouse, despite those exhortations from the management to switch the confounded things off. The only saving grace is that usually, people don't answer them.

However, the actor Michael Simkins (in his Guardian column) tells a story of how a friend was on stage when a phone went off. "Hello," answered the woman in the audience, and added: "I can't talk, I'm watching a play." And then, in response to the obvious question, she said: "No, not very."

At the other end of the scale, I call to the stand the blues guitarist Otis Taylor. It is reported that at a recent performance, he actually took a call on his mobile on stage and then left his ensemble to carry on while he exited to answer it. Maybe he was waiting for a better offer.

Some say that Mr Griffiths's antecedents - born in Teesside, the son of a steelworker - gave him the inner grit to face down the matinee mobile miscreant, insisting, "The 750 people here would be fully justified in suing you for ruining their afternoon."

Maybe. But this man has previous. Last year at the National Theatre he stopped in the middle of a scene when a phone went off and ordered the bearer to, "stand up, leave this auditorium and never come back."

In theatres - sorry, theaters - in New York, it is an offence to allow a mobile to spring into life during a live performance. It could land you with a $50 fine.

Now imagine having the sort of power demonstrated by Mr Griffiths when on a bus or train. How delightful would it be to say: "I don't give a toss for your private life.

"I don't care how drunk you were last night, or how big the deal is, or whether you need to get 500 boxes of staples from stores by five o'clock or the whole things goes pear shaped. I certainly don't care that you're ten minutes from home and that someone at the other end should get the sausages on. Keep me out of it and get off, sharpish."

The remarkable thing about Mr Griffiths's outburst is that he didn't explode until the third time the phone went off before he ordered the "matinee idle" from the stalls.

And then the audience gave him a standing ovation. If they're handing out gongs for public service, Mr G should be top of the list.